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The Essentials of Gaming Marketing

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October 11, 2022 By Alexander May, Managing Partner, Strategy, dentsu X

We like to play. It is a universal human behaviour. We are all designed to find fulfilment through play. It’s a safe and rewarding way in which we learn about ourselves and the world around us.

And You only have to look at how successful the gaming entertainment industry is today, to understand just how much people enjoy playing games.

Games designers and engineers have become so good at winning people’s attention and money, that the industry is now bigger than the music and film industries combined.

That’s why there is a current focus on gaming marketing. Agile brands would immediatealy recognize and shift their marketing positions, in order to meet the current demand.

Gaming has eaten entertainment and culture

It pervades every media and medium. Over the last 20 years, since the birth of the first smartphone, gaming has become the 3rd most popular mobile app category worldwide (trailing only retail and social media).

Gaming influencers from YouTube to Twitch and TikTok are now the biggest celebrities on the planet. It’s become so mainstream that Netflix feel the need to build out their online gaming platform, and its why the Wall Street Journal brought Wordle. 

Gaming will eat marketing too

With the techniques of game design being used now to engineer digital, immersive media as well as underpinning a future metaverse, the need for marketeers to fully understand the culture, communities and dynamics around gaming, games and play has become essential.

Not only does incorporating play and gaming into a brand’s marketing model improve effectiveness now – from immersive, playful paid media units through to gamified loyalty programmes – but it ensures that brands can learn and thrive in an immersive digital future. 

Dentsu’s For the Game report provides new research into the motivations of gamers and essential expert advice for how brands can start to authentically “show up” in gaming communities and environments; build valuable relationships with valuable consumers and ensure their brands and go-to-market approaches be fit for purpose in a new digital age built on game design.

At dentsu X we look for motivation in everything we do, for more explore our work.

Our team of experts deliver on experience beyond exposure, contact us today!